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“You’ve set up your own excavation, I see,” she said in a voice silky with menace. “Find anything interesting?”

“Nothing.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Just an empty hole.”

“Liar.”

Prellyn seized his chin and jerked his head up, forcing him to meet her eyes. Like most drow females, she stood head and shoulders taller than he. Red eyes smoldered under brows that pinched together in a perpetual frown. Her arms were more muscular than his own, her hands roughly calloused. The wrist-crossbow strapped to her forearm was loaded, its barbed point uncomfortably close to Q’arlynd’s cheek. If he turned his head, it would gouge his eye.

“Still,” Prellyn whispered, “I like a boy with some fire in his eye. A fire …” Her free hand drifted down between his legs, “that kindles at my command.”

She kissed him. Hard. Q’arlynd felt himself responding to her touch. Her air of menace was as exhilarating as a freefall. She was going to take him. Now. And when she was done, she’d punish him for daring to scavenge on his own. Not with a whipping, like those doled out to common House boys, but with something far more subtle. A wounding spell, perhaps, one that would burn a thousand tiny spider bites into his flesh.

He hoped it was going to be worth it.

Prellyn forced Q’arlynd onto his back atop the rubble and straddled him. She ran a finger down his nose, lingering over the spot where it had been broken decades ago. Then she yanked open his shirt.

Aroused though he was, Q’arlynd had a more pressing need. Information.

Flinderspeld was hiding in the hole, unwilling to come out. He’d blurred himself and was all but invisible, though the ring he wore allowed Q’arlynd to overhear his every thought whenever his master wished. At the moment, Flinderspeld was mentally shaking his head at Q’arlynd’s infatuation for Prellyn—a drow female he knew his master feared as much as he himself did. Flinderspeld also watched for a chance to slip away and hide the magical booty his master had just found.

Sometimes, Flinderspeld could be a little too efficient.

Q’arlynd seized control of his slave’s body and forced Flinderspeld to drop his magical camouflage, crawl out of hiding, and attempt to sneak away.

Prellyn’s attention was drawn to the deep gnome. She stood, leaving Q’arlynd forgotten on the rubble. Her eyes locked on the pendant.

“Give me that,” she ordered.

Q’arlynd made Flinderspeld hesitate. “You heard her, slave,” Q’arlynd said in a harsh voice as he sat up. “Give it to her!”

Flinderspeld looked at his master, confused. What was Q’arlynd up to? Normally the wizard expected him to lie low so he could keep whatever booty he’d found to himself.

Q’arlynd, growing impatient, gave a mental jerk. The deep gnome’s hand shot forward. The pendant, which Flinderspeld held by its chain, swung back and forth like a pendulum.

Prellyn reached out to grab it then suddenly recoiled as if she’d been about to touch something smeared with contact poison.

Q’arlynd climbed to his feet. Through the rings, he could sense Flinderspeld’s dawning understanding. His master wanted Prellyn to see the silver pendant. The deep gnome also wondered why she was so afraid of it.

Q’arlynd feigned ignorance. “What’s wrong?” he asked Prellyn. He moved toward Flinderspeld and bent for a closer look at the pendant, pretending to be observing it for the first time. “Interesting emblem on the blade,” he said, reaching out to touch it. “A circle and sword. If I’m not mistaken, those are the symbols of—”

The hiss of steel—a weapon being drawn from a scabbard—was his only warning. He jerked his hand back just as Prellyn’s sword cut through the chain Flinderspeld was holding. Had Q’arlynd not moved, the blade might have sliced open his hand. The pendant clattered to the ground.

Flinderspeld still held the tiny sword. Q’arlynd made the deep gnome place it on a flat chunk of rock then released his mental hold on Flinderspeld, letting him ease away. He didn’t want the deep gnome to wind up on the receiving end of Prellyn’s wrath.